


Bad Blood

by AliceInKinkland



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Community: femslash_minis, Established Relationship, F/F, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4137789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceInKinkland/pseuds/AliceInKinkland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is becoming the worst game of chicken Faith has ever played.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kwritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/gifts).



> Written for [femslash_minis](http://femslash-minis.livejournal.com/) round #119 for kwritten who wanted the pairing along with the A Softer World poem "I would kill for you/ but then again,/ I like killing/ (I would die for you. But then again, I like dying)" as well as a war/battle setting, open wounds, and an established relationship, and didn't want fluff or a happy ending.

Faith fakes left, ducks right, and stabs the vamp from behind before he’s even had a chance to turn around. She’s panting, which is never a good plan with this much undead dust in the air, but she can’t help it—a solid hour into the biggest battle she’s fought since the First, and she’s long since come down from the initial adrenaline high, her body settled into the slow burn of a drawn-out fight.

She turns in time to see two more vamps approaching her, and moves to meet them, stake out, muscles itching to slam their bodies to the ground. A few failed attacks later, however, and Faith realizes these two are a definite challenge. They’re trained fighters, one of them knocking her stake out of her hand with ease, the other almost pulling her into a chokehold. But she’s got this. Nothing she ain’t handled before.

The larger one clocks her one to her hip, though, and for a moment she’s reeling. When she steadies herself, her view is blocked by a whirl of blonde and chatter and wicked tight designer jeans, and her first thought is, _dammit, B._

This isn’t how you fight—it’s how you get yourself killed.

When they first started doing the fighting side by side thing again, Faith thought the worst nights were when Buffy fought robot-like—like she was somewhere far away, like she’d done it all before, like the punches she took wouldn’t hurt her but the ones she dished out wouldn’t make her feel anything either. Watching her felt like pounding on a door that wouldn’t open.

This, though—this recklessness, this hurricane of whirling angry arms? It’s way scarier.

Faith pushes her…girlfriend?...aside. _(Dammit, now is not the time to be freaking over words)._ The smaller vamp launches himself at B, but Faith’s there, leaping onto his back, covering his eyes as she draws another stake. It feels good to kill for B—it’s one of those things that feels too good, that she needs to keep an eye on, Faith knows, but hell, it’s better to admit this still gets her hot than act like it doesn’t, right?

Faith feels the stake pop through another cold, still heart, and bam—one more, dusted. One out of fuck knows how many, but still—Faith’s ready for more.

Buffy, though—Buffy’s down. Ragged line of red across stomach, widening by the second, and the other vamp closing in fast. B’s making some joke about them ruining her shirt, but Faith can tell—this really isn’t something to laugh about.

Faith kicks the bloodsucker off her…girl? _(Maybe just girl is better)._ She picks B up before he can descend again, and books it to the edge of the battlefield, pressing one hand firmly against Buffy’s stomach.

“What are you doing, Faith?”

“This cut of yours needs attention, B.”

“Yeah, well, how about that waits until after this major battle that we are currently in the middle of, _F_?”

Faith sighs. “You know I wouldn’t pull you outta there unless I actually thought you needed it, dumbass.” It’s not like she’s just extra worried about B now that they’re dating, right?

_(Dating? Together? Fucking with a side of daily screaming match? Woah, since when does Faith care this much about finding the right words?)_

Faith lifts B’s shirt up, despite the other woman’s protests, and no, she’s not overacting. The gash is long, and deep enough that Faith can see more than blood and skin in the opening. With a sickening twist to her gut, Faith remembers her own shirt slick with her stomach’s insides; remembers Buffy’s much younger, less world-weary face, all shock and terror; remembers when the other slayer used to haunt her dreams.

Hell, all that shit between them, that history—it’s something you can forgive, and lately they’ve both been giving forgiveness a damn good try, but Faith is realizing it still hangs in the air between them all the time, ready to coalesce in moments like these, when they’re both wicked tense and ready to snap. It’s like the blood on B’s shirt, which Faith for one sure as hell doesn’t know how to wash out again.

“Faith, seriously. At least just let me rest here alone. Go back and fight. We need everyone out there.”

Faith shoots B a face that’s all, _wanna go?_ “Right. And I’m just supposed to trust you won’t go lurching back in there right behind me? Nope, you gotta sit this one out, B, and I’m gonna stay right beside you, do the girlfriend thing.”

Fuck, Faith realizes, she just said _girlfriend._ Fucking hell.

B looks like she wants to hit her and then kiss her, and Faith never knows what to make of the low-down tingle that always gives her. It can’t be a good sign, the almost-hitting. Or the getting hot for it.

Really though, she and B, they never go beyond shouting and storming off—never even throw nothing, although sometimes Faith is tempted to, especially when Buffy acts like she has all the answers. Like a few shitty relationships make B some kinda expert in this thing Faith is pretty terrified is love. No, they just yell—which, let’s be real, is what a couple of Faith’s mom’s exes were like on their best days—cool off some, then have the kind of sex Faith has always imagined they’d have, all jutting hip bones and the sharp press of fingernails and blood in her mouth like stale lipstick. And then they’re back to circling each other, walking the line between flirtation and insult, and sometimes Faith loves the fire of it, and other times she wants to grab B by the shoulders and say so many things she isn’t even sure she has the words for.

Buffy closes her eyes, wincing. “Just…fine. Don’t blame me if the world really ends this time.” They both know it won’t. They can feel the way the tide is turning, slayers all around them pushing back against the same old forces of darkness that fill Faith with a terror so familiar it hardly registers as scary. What’s the point, when there are so many other things to fear?

It’s humiliating, though, being pulled away from a battle. Faith gets it. That’s why she’s doing the pulling, giving B an excuse, even though that feels shitty too, somehow. Faith’s heart is poundpounding, and she’s trying not to worry so much about the blood pooling between her fingers as she presses her palm against Buffy, because they’re winning, and B’s got that slayer healing going for her, so they’re both gonna be five by five by morning, and since when does Faith wig out like this anyway?

It isn’t the right moment for a kiss, so Faith doesn’t lean in. It isn’t the right moment to say all the stupid shit bouncing around Faith’s head, either. There’s so much she’s never said to B, and fuck, if a frickin’ apocalypse won’t make her say it then what will? She’d thought, after the wicked rush of their first kiss a month ago, that things would finally start to feel easy between them. Faith keeps waiting, but B isn’t saying nothing either. It’s becoming the worst game of chicken Faith has ever played.

Faith wants to stake another dozen vamps, wants to kick and punch them more than necessary along the way, wants to feel bones crack underneath her fingers and see blood stain her knuckles the colour of B’s nail polish or a carton of her mother’s wine. But instead she sits beside this girl she loves in a way that won’t quit feeling like a knife in her stomach, because she’s not supposed to think like that. And because the way B was fighting out there chilled her. Faith laughs, an incongruous snort in the midst of the bloodthick night air. They’re both supposed to be recovered, aren’t they? Reformed. Renewed. Not into the killing, or the dying, anymore.

Yeah, right.


End file.
